I'm guessing this is a newer API and suppose the mostly supported one going forward? In your post, however, the people you spoke with did mention the "/Speak" endpoint, which this one is not, as compared to the one being used by the plugin, which while a very different URL, that is calling "/Speak".

Regardless, I used the documentation on the Oxford Project based API, where gender can indeed be specified, and built out some PHP code to test, and can, with 100% consistency, have my text converted to audio in the specific "dialect" and "gender" specified.

So, I suppose, if worse comes to worse, the plugin could potentially be updated to use the Oxford Project based API, however, it seems the limits are a bit lower. I was able to use the same client ID, but had to signup there to obtain a new / different key / secret to get it going.

Here (Dutch) also the female voice changed suddenly in maile voice last week. But also it's much slower now..it takes more than 10 seconds before the TTS starts. I also use the Google TTS and this is much faster (immediate response) only I can use it only 2 times per day on one of my Sonos players. I hope the Microsoft TTS can be improved...

The delay is also at the start. When I manually run a "say" message it takes more than 5 seconds before it starts. Before this was much faster with the MS TTS. Google TTS reacts always instantly. I have made my own personsl weather announcement that runs every morning and consists of several seperate messages. With google its ready in15-20 seconds. With the recent MS this takes more than 1 minute...Really annoying so I switched this one back to Google

And after an upload and Luup restart, I'm 10 for 10 with the Male voice (based on my settings).

While I didn't mind my morning weather announcement as a female, my nightly joke of the day, after setting the alarm, comes off so much better in a male voice :-)

Thanks for looking into this for us!

I'm guessing a quick update to the plugin could be released with a drop down for gender (assuming all languages support), in order to dynamically set, though, this may be a bit tricky, since only the Microsoft API supports gender (I'm assuming).

The solution could be to finally add a voice/gender paramter to the Say action.For MS translator, we will use Male or Female as parameter value.For Mary TTS, it will allow to choose the voice.And for MS translator, a default gender will be required.

This increased bitrate could explain why it takes more time to start playing. The file to download is bigger. We could decide to switch to option MinSize and have a smaller file and so a faster download..

I have finally added a parameter "Microsoft option". By default, the parameter is empty and the result will be a small audio file and no gender specified.You can set in the plugin UI one of these values: "Male", "Female", "MinSize|Male", "MinSize|Female", "MaxQuality|Male", "MaxQuality|Female".

You will have to upload 4 files I have updated: I_Sonos1.xml J_Sonos1.js L_SonosTTS.lua S_Sonos1.xmlDon't forget to free your WEB browser cache as the JavaScript file is updated.

So with this update, by default smaller files will be produced. It is safer for our Vera with so small memory and by the way I don't really hear a difference in quality. The other advantage is a shorter delay to listen the text. It is noticeable especially when using a big text.Of course if you think the quality is reduced too much, you can set the new option to MaxQuality to restore the previous quality.And of course with this update, duration calculation is fixed, meaning a faster resume.And finally you can even use the new option parameter to force a male or female voice.